Editorial: Challenges in Pakistan, Afghanistan

Friday

Jul 25, 2008 at 12:01 AMJul 25, 2008 at 2:28 AM

As American casualties have been declining in Iraq, they have been rising in Afghanistan. And that's just part of the bad news from the nearly forgotten front in George W. Bush's war on terror. The Taliban is on the march again. Al Qaeda is as strong as it was before 9/11. Opium from Afghan poppies is flooding world markets. The government of Hamid Karzai, which has never fully controlled the country outside the capital, is viewed as ineffective and corrupt.

As American casualties have been declining in Iraq, they have been rising in Afghanistan. And that's just part of the bad news from the nearly forgotten front in George W. Bush's war on terror. The Taliban is on the march again. Al Qaeda is as strong as it was before 9/11. Opium from Afghan poppies is flooding world markets. The government of Hamid Karzai, which has never fully controlled the country outside the capital, is viewed as ineffective and corrupt.

The woes in Afghanistan cannot be separated from the challenges facing Pakistan. Al Qaeda and the Taliban operate out of the tribal areas of Northern Pakistan that the government in Islamabad does not control. Nor does the government necessarily control the ISI, Pakistan's intelligence service, which helped create the Taliban. Corruption, instability and military coups have plagued Pakistan for decades, and a new insurgency, likely responsible for the assassination last year of Benazir Bhutto, is taking root. And remember, Pakistan has nuclear weapons.

Regaining lost ground in Afghanistan will require more troops, but make no mistake: Neither NATO nor the United States can invade and occupy Afghanistan. The British in the 19th century failed, as did the Soviets in the 20th century. Patient reforms, deft diplomacy and a lot of non-military aid will be needed over many years to help the Afghans build a nation that has always looked more coherent on maps than on the ground.

The same elements are needed in Pakistan, whose new prime minister will meet with President Bush in Washington this week. A hint of the difficulties ahead can be found in the State Department's recent decision to shift almost $230 million in U.S. aid from counter-terrorism to upgrading Pakistan's F-16 attack planes. Some officials fear that, instead of being used to establish control over the tribal areas where Al Qaeda and the Taliban now hide, the aid - more than two-thirds of the military aid promised to Pakistan will end up fueling Pakistan's long-running rivalry with India instead of helping address the terrorist threat.

In response to a State Department claim that better F-16s will be more effective in counter-terrorism, one Democratic aide told The New York Times that "using F-16s this way is like hitting a fly with a sledgehammer."

The same could be said of a strategy that uses purely military approaches to the challenge of nation-building on the other side of the world. There is so much that Afghanistan and Pakistan need: economic development, modern infrastructure, rule of law, civic institutions, education, health care, honest government, counter-narcotics as well as counter-terrorism.

Soldiers alone cannot provide those things, nor can NATO or the United States. But with the right support - military and non-military - Afghans and Pakistanis can find their way to a better future. Given the global reach of lawlessness and extremism, that better future should be safer for everyone.